


Life off

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bittersweet, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Historical, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 08:16:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River Song had always enjoyed taking days off in the past. Particularly to witness History in the making. But Clara had her own story to write.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life off

**Author's Note:**

> [Howard Carter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Carter) (9 May 1874 – 2 March 1939) was an English archaeologist and Egyptologist known for discovering the tomb of 14th-century BC pharaoh Tutankhamun.
> 
> [George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herbert,_5th_Earl_of_Carnarvon), 5th Earl of Carnarvon, DL (26 June 1866 – 5 April 1923), was an English aristocrat best known as the financial backer of the search for and the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
> 
> [Sir Frederic George Kenyon ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_G._Kenyon)(15 January 1863 – 23 August 1952) was a British paleographer and biblical and classical scholar. He occupied from 1889 to 1931 a series of posts at the British Museum. 
> 
> Lady Evelyn Leonora Almina Herbert (15 August 1901 – 1980) was the daughter of Lord Carnarvon.
> 
> Source: wikipedia.org
> 
> All mistakes are mine.

Her little Egyptian vacation, she intended to call it. A time for indulging her primitive and vain ethos. The occasion to sink in the time and place and simply live.

She rented a room in a boarding house near the British Museum.  It was only a matter of time, she thought, before Lady Evelyn whom she met at parties introduced her to her father. And from then on, she would not even need to work her psychic paper magic; she had studied Lord Carnarvon enough to handle him with a smile and a single word: Tutankhamen. She always had a soft spot for ancient Egypt, it used to unsettle Pr. Candy.

She enjoyed the crispness of the proximity with the other lodgers in the house, maybe more than the hours of cataloguing in the museum. Wee hours spent above crocheted scarves and fruit cakes, after stretched afternoons where the five o’clock tea would wake the ancient dust from its slumber. Her aching muscles would revive in the dancing halls, filled with smoke and jazz. The week would pass in a soft whispered routine and muffled laughter would come out from her room at ungodly hours. The debutantes and the archaeologists would smile when Friday came. They would go to the pictures Friday evenings.

Gertie and Margaret would belong to the two crowds, archaeologist and lodger. At night, when River was not occupied with Lady Evelyn in the storeroom, they would walk together from the Museum and get lost in the smog, River delighting in knowing more jazz hit songs than her contemporary roommates. Gertie and Margaret would hold her tighter, arms looped together, and tell appalling History jokes.

One day, Clara Oswyn appeared. She was waiting for them at the back door of the Museum. The petite brunette, well-groomed, was wearing a dull suit, witness to better days. Yet the open, bright set of features on her face had a resilience oddly arresting.

“Doctors,” she called brashly and Gertie growled in annoyance. River elbowed her colleague discreetly and took a step towards the diminutive woman -girl even, she noticed while taking in the plump cheeks and long hair. But the make-up and countenance were those of a grown-up. She could not have been more than eighteen.

“We’re all Professors here,” River answered, voice even. The young woman batted her lashes, impervious to the tension in the atmosphere, gripped the hem of her coat and tilted her head. She was studying River with an avidity almost feverish. “That’s something our gentlemen colleagues conceded to the fair sex quite a while back. Though the inventory seemed to have climbed the ladder with us,” River added with an inviting smile to the girl.

The smog was smudging her silhouette, like a romantic ghost lost to the city, and hovering between the racing shadows. The girl smoothed a hand across her dress and lifted her chin, as if gathering courage.

“My name is Clara Oswyn and I want to work here.”

Margaret hissed between her teeth and Gertie was about to answer when River extended a hand in the girl’s direction. “I’m Professor River Song,“ she sang. Her joy at saying those words would probably never diminish. “Delighted to meet a young woman so interested in our work.”

She looked pointedly at Clara while using the term woman and the girl had the decency to blush briefly, before a flash of understanding passed her eyes. The tremor of a smile touched her lips when she realised River would not disclose her secret.

“I’m afraid, if the museum is always searching for help, most of the work here is very nearly gratifying.” Margaret huffed contemptibly. “And,” River continued, closing her eyes to ignore the grimaces of her colleagues, “far from romantic.”

Clara’s eyes brightened and she hopped closer to the shuddering huddle.

“Oh, I know that. I just want to be around.” River’s hand was still open before her and the girl captured it with both hands. Not shaking, holding with tiny hands and hopes sipping through her pores. River glanced momentarily down, caught unaware.

“I can type,” Clara chirped, face alight. “Pretty fast. And I can learn. Just let me work in the museum. Please?”

Amy had tried her several times about working with her, once. The concept of observing the inside of a museum from a distant future, even if terrestrial, had been irresistible. As the idea of working with Amy. Her mother could have bribed her. River accepted right away. Candy had growled, but it was for a day only.

River grabbed her hands, enclosing them, and nodded heartily.

“I’m sure Sir Frederic could be approached about a new secretary in the Egyptology department.”

Gertie squawked and River stepped quite potently on her foot.

 

***

 

As expected, Lord Carnarvon fell under River’s spell and sent her to Egypt to keep an eye on Carter during what the Egyptologist thought to be his last season of digging the concession. Bless him. Lord Carnarvon needed not to know of her masculine disguise on the excavation site, though, and it was in his best interest only that she was there to join the fun –and occasional orgy. The trickiest part was keeping away from the various cameras always snapping on the site.

She coded herself the telegram announcing the discovery of the door to Lord Carnarvon.

As soon as she came back to London, she gave her notes to the department, and Sir Frederic was so carried away he kissed her on the cheek. Outside the room where the Egyptologists were crying with joy over the photographs and drawings, Clara was waiting. River stepped out, enraptured, drained after an hour of account and stilled before the young woman, neatly dressed, leaner. It had been a year.

Clara took her hand and pulled her along, not saying a word as she strode long the corridors, past the offices and watchmen, up to the reading room, emptied by the news.  She sat River on a bench and jumped on the opposite table. Trembling.

“Tell me everything,” she simply asked.

River smiled.

Later, she would recall that night as the most fulfilling childish moment she ever experienced. She would try to recreate it, with her students, gathered in secret at the University library. She would only find them, the night spent, in love with her a little. She aimed for a more academic crush.

She aimed for that girl’s rapture.

Clara Oswyn listened that night, as the dome was shading its dying light on them, as the Librarian locked them in, and the obscurity filled the room. Clara kept listening to the dust and the vain hopes, the countless notes and the dying warmth of the day in the desert. Clara wept when River told her of the seal of Tutankhamen. And Clara held River’s hands.

There would be other nights, in the closed Museum hall, in the Egyptology department, when Clara would talk, about her life in London, about her childhood, about her dreams. About the pavement burying them all and when she wanted to take a shovel and excavate them. And River would laugh.

The stories Clara would tell about River, about her archaeologist acquaintance who offered her a job at the Museum, were stupendous adventures her own mother only could have told and the Doctor could have lived.

But that first night Clara listened and River understood, that for a whole year, and unknowingly, she had been Clara’s friend.

They had to break out of the Museum, that night.

 

***

 

River would leave, again. And later, again. Because her world is wide and Tutankhamen’s tomb her occasional week-end in Egypt. But at the end of the trip, as her mother used to make a detour to buy delicatessen at the other end of the town when River would stay in, she would stop by London. And the British Museum.

 

***

 

Dear Clara, who would always be there, waiting by the door, for her piece of History in the making. Story rather. Clara and her stories. She must have been in love with them. She never picked her up at the station, never met her by the boarding house. Even when River’s transport was belated, Clara would trust River to come directly to the Museum. Sometimes, River would have nothing to drop to the department, and without a word for her colleagues about the progression of the dig. But, always, she would have time for Clara, for her cravings of elsewhere, of dust and stenching water. For Carter’s moustache and Herbert’s boots. For the hours waited in draughty train stations, spread on grey docks.

For Clara and her love of stories, River took the train, and the plane, and the boat. And she recorded it in a tiny leather copybook Clara would behold with reverence on their meetings. It was part of the ritual. River never wrote to Clara.

Half the time, she was not even on Earth.

But the copybook held more power in her hands than any letter she could have sent. Clara would dream of the copybook and never suspect the gashing omissions within its pages.

Clara’s life fitted in River’s week-end trips.

One night, as River was getting up to leave –the librarian had long ago picked up on their reunions and given them the keys to the reading room-, Clara gripped her hand more tightly, holding her back. River looked up, bemused, tugging gently but the girl refused to let her go and paled visibly under the star light, eyes shaded.

“I want to go. So much. I will travel.”

River stepped close, her other hand going to Clara’s face and grazing her cheek.

“You can. There’s nothing keeping you from going. You said you wanted to learn.“ River squeezed her hand. “I think it’s time you stop dreaming. “

 

***

 

Clara received the news of her joining an expedition in Iraq just as the Tutankhamen’s dig was closed. Ten years of meticulous filing and tireless squaring on the site had passed for River. And classes, conferences, and travels. Many of them. With the Doctor, without the Doctor, on her own digs, on other planets.

River would always come back for Clara.  

Week-ends in the British Museum, via the Valley of the Kings.

For Clara, it had been hard work, River knew it. Gertie and Margaret -Mrs. Blenkenshop at last- had overcome their initial annoyance and taken the woman under their wings. Clara became Doctor in Archaeology.

As a present, River gifted to her the leather copybook, duly completed with little lies, little stiches making up her discontinuous existence. A life in which coming home from Cairo, she bought a gown in Marseille, and did not stop by Jupiter to share a romantic breakfast with her husband.

The evening before Clara left for Calais with the other students accepted for the expeditions, she staggered on a grim figure, with piercing blue eyes, donned with anachronic garments. Top hat and Victorian coat.

He was watching over, dispassionate and concealed, a scrawny man with spiky hair and a blue stripped outfit. The curious man was engrossed in a heated discussion with a street book-seller. The hidden man edged close to the book-seller’s horse dozing off before its carriage across the street, feet away from the debate. He unhooked the creature and gave it a violent tap on the rump. Startled, the horse raced blindly forward, going for the suddenly petrified men. Clara leaped forward, pushing them out of the way. Hooves burst her chest like a balloon and she let out a stunned “Oh”.

The man in a blue outfit jumped to his feet and ran after the man in Victorian clothes, leaving the book seller bent above Clara’s curled up form. The smog was slowly rising from the gutter and the panicked man was very meticulous around her. She was already shattered, she wished she had the leather copybook on herself. It had already been sent to Calais.

“Ma’am, can you hear me? Ma’am, don’t fall asleep.”

But all Clara could hear was Professor Song’s voice, telling her of the wonders of broken temples, of the air inside the tomb, of her pencil on the paper. Trying not to tremble as she was perusing the remains of a jewel.

_Open like books, Clara. Not a broken puzzle to put back together, but a book to decipher._

***

 

River never found out what happened to Clara Oswyn. It is a mystery she never solved, even when she was introduced to the Doctor’s new assistant, Clara, of the million lives and deaths, of the one and only face. Maybe she never took the time to solve it. Maybe she had not the heart to infer what a connection to the Doctor could accomplish to a heart like Clara’s.

Rive likes to think it is simply Clara’s way of paying her back, of giving her a friend she can dream of, in her dreamless death.

Clara Oswyn, her archaeologist acquaintance who dreamt of Iraq and Egypt and had time to travel there.

 

 

 


End file.
